Fight Right! How to Resolve Conflicts in Your Family and Business | S1E10

Steve Alessi: 0:09

We want to welcome you again to another episode of the family business podcast where we are talking family, because let's face it, family is everybody's business. And I'm joined today with Christopher Alessi and Gaby Alessi. So Gaby give us our roll-in music,

Gabrielle Alessi: 0:31

(singing) The family business podcast....

Steve Alessi: 0:38

We are, here we are, we're right on top of it. And that's one of the reasons why we can work together. Gaby keeps things happy. And Chris, he just keeps things...

Gabrielle Alessi: 0:47

He keeps things nappy.

Steve Alessi: 0:51

All right, so we have Jon Roman who's on a mic. Somewhere in the back.

Jon Roman: 0:55

Hello, everyone.

Steve Alessi: 0:56

Yep. And we have Allen Paul, who's over his shoulder making sure we do all of this right. And even Ashlie Munoz....perfect. And she is with us behind the camera. So we're going to be talking today because we all work together. And up until last year, so we all lived together. But Chris has moved out now that he's married, he has his own thing going on. But we still... the majority of us still live together. So what people see on Sunday, and when we come together during the week and we work, it looks like things.... We never fight.

Chris Alessi: 1:40

Oh, yeah.

Steve Alessi: 1:41

Unless you're on staff and you happen to have an office next to one of ours...

Gabrielle Alessi: 1:46

Because all of our offices are like [aper walls...

Steve Alessi: 1:48

...Paper walls, and you'll either hear mom crying, or we'll hear somebody screaming. And then when....

Chris Alessi: 1:55

or if you pay a lot of attention to the front row during a service, because you'll probably catch somebody saying "Change your face. Change your face."

Steve Alessi: 2:01

Oh, yeah. Get off your phone. So here's the thing. Do we fight?

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:06

Yes.

Steve Alessi: 2:07

Hmm.

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:08

Well, you guys fight. I don't know. We all fight.

Chris Alessi: 2:11

There has been a lot of fighting. A lot of fighting. Yeah. When you're passionate about what you do.

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:16

Yeah.

Chris Alessi: 2:17

There's a lot of misplaced passion.

Steve Alessi: 2:20

Yeah. And you can still work together while you're fighting.

Chris Alessi: 2:23

Absolutely.

Steve Alessi: 2:24

Yeah, you get along with Chris 100% of the time, Gaby?

Chris Alessi: 2:28

I've made Gaby cry at least three times since she's been on staff.

Steve Alessi: 2:31

Gaby cries quite a bit.

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:32

I cry....if you talk about it too much I'll start crying now.

Chris Alessi: 2:37

But I've made her cry on at least three occasions during work hours talking about work things.

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:44

No, but think within the first six months of me being on staff, I could probably say three months, I cried three times.

Chris Alessi: 2:49

Okay, to be fair,

Gabrielle Alessi: 2:49

in your office,

Chris Alessi: 2:50

I started at 19 years old, I cried a lot out of just anger and frustration for

Steve Alessi: 2:55

Hey Gaby, let's make this podcast about Christopher.

Gabrielle Alessi: 3:00

He was just talking about me. Let the games begin!

Steve Alessi: 3:07

The point there is you can work together as a family, and even fight while you're working together as a family. Because there's...like you said, Chris, I appreciate you saying that. You've got to be passionate about this thing. And if you're passionate, especially in a leadership position, you don't turn passion on and off. Passion.... you're passionate about everything. Passionate about shopping, passionate about driving, passionate about doing ministry, singing, preaching, praying, all of those things. It's just part of the passion. So sometimes we have differing opinions. And even though I feel like I've done this a lot longer than y'all, what I find sometimes is the pressure of doing it a different way. Because we've had to keep these phrases away from our working relationship, even with our staff, and the phrase that we try to keep out of the picture is "Well, that's how we've always done it. Or this is how we did it in the past. So let's keep doing it this way." And working with two different generations, what I find is sometimes even when I think I know what's best, it is good to be able to open up to other ideas that you guys would bring to the table. But it doesn't seem to be in the moment that I'm so open for that. And that's where some of our little arguments...

Chris Alessi: 4:34

Are you pitching it to us to share from our experience now? Is that what that is?

Steve Alessi: 4:36

Go for it boy.

Gabrielle Alessi: 4:37

I think this is Chris...Dad and I are very on the same page.

Chris Alessi: 4:42

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 4:46

What do we think?

Chris Alessi: 4:47

Well, I think, you know, I think that you you're in a very unique situation, where you feel it is your job to raise and train and teach. And so that means I have to go by my experiences to tell you what we've done, while also really trying to balance the... "but we can't do it just because that's how we've done it." And you happen to have a very opinionated first child, who always had with, you know, we just did the working geniuses thing, where we all got to see what we derive energy from. And one of mine just spoke to, it was discernment, not spiritual, but it spoke to, when I hear something, I think something. And when I think something, I say something. And it took a long time to learn how to put little barriers between those things and think, okay, just because I'm hearing something doesn't mean I need to think something. And just because I'm thinking something doesn't think I need to say something doesn't mean I have to say it. And that took a lot of time for me to learn. And there are days where I'll start to unlearn it and have to remind myself sometimes right in the middle of it. So in all of that, and then you add on the desire of a son that really wants to please his dad, and a dad that probably doesn't want to overdo it with his son, what you get is a lot of conversations that aren't being had, but under the surface of the fight are the "If you would just trust me, then I can prove to you I'm I can make you happy." And the other is, "If you would just trust me, you would see you don't need to get burdened by all of this." That was probably the underlying conversations of like, 80% of our fights.

Steve Alessi: 6:24

Yeah.

Chris Alessi: 6:25

And, you know, now we look at it, and I was a younger kid, I didn't have a role where my opinion was valued. Now, I'm older, and I have a role where my opinion is valued. And suddenly we don't fight as much anymore. Because it's just the way that you grow up, you mature, you grow out of things and things change.

Steve Alessi: 6:42

It takes a minute to get there.

Chris Alessi: 6:44

12 minutes for me.

Steve Alessi: 6:45

Yeah, it takes some time to get there so that you build up trust with one another. And you learn that, you know, I don't have to, I don't have to always be right. And I don't have to get it right. Even if knowing to do something is going to get us from where we're at to where we need to be sometimes as a leader, it's good for me to step back, because now I want to see how you plan.

Gabrielle Alessi: 7:11

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 7:12

to get us from here to there. Now it is different working with a son and working with a daughter. A son, well, let me start with the daughter. The daughter usually just says, Okay, tell me how to do it. And I'll do it.

Gabrielle Alessi: 7:23

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 7:23

So we had our planning session at the farm this year. Yeah. And we were talking about youth and and sitting down and talking about youth, you were like a sponge, and you were writing things down, and you were putting them down on the calendar. And then you would bring those things that we would share. And you'd bring them to Chris, and you'd put them on the calendar and get things moving forward. You're a sponge, you take, in a sense, the ball and you run. Working with a son, especially as he gets older, it's a lot more sensitive in nature. And maybe it'll be the same thing as you continue to grow and mature in this Gaby,but for Chris, it's like, okay, we're still learning this. But it's like, Okay, what are you thinking? How do you think you can get there? Because if I come too strong at you with demands, "This is what I want," then it could be met with pushback. Yeah, because partly, it's a son in the way that he deals with a dad, which is you're glad that dad can be dad until dad needs to be right on

Gabrielle Alessi: 8:30

Yeah. something and make you do something. But as you will always want dad to be dad, you also want the opportunity to be able to show dad in the organization and even use your own ability, your own thoughts, your gifting to move the organization forward. Because let's face it, when dad gets a certain age, dad's old fashioned, that's... that's always going to be the case. Not wise, it's just old fashioned, not experienced it's old fashioned. And to the young person, and I was there working with my dad. It's like he's outdated. Let me let me come in with something new. So there's more of a son wanting to exercise his own gifting, his own creative thoughts and ideas that sometimes will combat...

Steve Alessi: 9:17

That come alongside of us and like, okay, come across like it's combative to the father, and there can be pushback. But one thing we have to always remember. And that is fighting isn't a bad thing. Arguing is not a bad thing. Yelling isn't a bad thing. Getting frustrating, getting a l ttle physical is not a bad t ing. It's... it's part of how we respond when sometimes the press re gets on, put on us. What s bad is when we let it stay here and not address it. And tha 's where we... it's a, it's a continuous work. And I'm very rateful that we have great sta f. they're dealing with their stuff, the family stuff.

Gabrielle Alessi: 10:05

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 10:05

And they don't get involved. They don't take sides. They're very understanding, even when it comes to big staff meetings or planning sessions, and we would bump heads, even with mom and I over the years, bump heads. But here's why I bring that up. Because people, of course, may think, well, you guys always get along. No, we don't. But we figure out how to work it out. The other side to that is, Chris, when frustration arises, because of the work, things that happened on the job, there's a need for us to protect the integrity of the workplace. And you...in your book, which is entitled, Up Next, you have a chapter on what is called the ride home. So why don't you kind of unwrap that a little bit? Tell us what that actually looks like?

Chris Alessi: 11:02

Well, it's, it's funny, it's, you know, how we all could have one truth, but take so many different things from it.

Gabrielle Alessi: 11:09

Yeah.

Chris Alessi: 11:09

Because dad hears about it, and he sees the side of protecting the workplace. But when I wrote the drive home, it was really more because of my experience as a youth pastor, with my sister, Stephanie. You know, Stephanie was the worship leader. I was a youth pastor. And we normally would ride to and from church together, because it's Friday nights, we weren't at work. And so it was hilarious how driving on the way to church was worship music, you know, we're so excited. We're talking about things. I'm processing my sermon with her. She's listening, she's practicing her song, it's all that. But the drive home was a lot different.

Gabrielle Alessi: 11:45

Yeah.

Chris Alessi: 11:46

things didn't go right. We both had certain expectations for the overall night and the part that we played, we both expected more of somebody. And then all of a sudden, you... you have to keep that good face on the entire service. You had to keep, especially as the leaders, you could not let people think something was wrong, because one of the other parts of the book is if they're asking what's wrong, you've already lost, no one's focusing on the night, they're now focusing on you. So it was always keeping that on, making sure "okay, I'll deal with this later." And then as immature younger kids, we got in the car, and we went to blows. We weren't fighting about the issues. We were fighting because we had issues. And we would go at it and go at it and go at it. And you're the... it was almost like, if there were subtitles, they would say "You're the cause of all my problems. And the reason we're not as good as I want to be." And she'd be saying, "You're the reason for all my problems and why my area of ministry isn't as good as I want it to be." And it's so funny how when you start those fights, not necessarily fighting over the issues, to find out what's the best option. But when you're drained and you're upset, and you now allow your emotion to come out in a fight, it's funny how it became real personal. And how it was now, this is a you problem. And if you would just, and that's where, you know, in fighting, you have to learn I think some of my psychology taught me, some of our families taught us, you know, be very careful with how you fight, you don't make it personal. Even in our fighting, you have given us certain rules to it. We don't do this, we don't use words like I don't agree, whatever. But the drive home is about making sure you protect that time, when you know you're going to be most drained. When you know now... now the effects of the ministry and keeping a good face on have hit us the most.

Gabrielle Alessi: 13:32

You're emotional.

Chris Alessi: 13:33

... or yeah, we protect that time. Because what we found is, if we did that, what Stephanie and I found is if we did that, at that time, it did follow us into work the next day. So the thing we should have done from the beginning was, hey, there's five or six things that didn't go right. Let me write them down. And when I get to work the next morning, let me write them down. Let me talk about 'em. Let me...Let's fight then, let's talk about it. So the truth is, you mentioned in protecting the integrity of the workplace. Well, that means, Do work at work, that we're a family. We do work at home all the time. But there's certain work, leave that for the office. And that allowed us to be family at home. So that allowed me to be brother Chris in the car, not Pastor Chris in the car. That allowed Stephanie to be my sister, Stephanie, not necessarily the worship leader who felt like I shouldn't have rushed her and that last song because we needed to make up for time. So it protected all of the environments. And that was really, really hard. You know, I think Dad, you had the opportunity. You had the right to say no, we're at home, but we're going to work, or "Hey, we're at work, but we're going to talk about family stuff." You had that right. But I didn't. And I did not have the right to take problems home, especially when we all lived together. When you and mom had your day off when you guys were in bed, when you guys were going to sleep, you guys used to call me the bomber, the unabomber because we'd walk right into your office. "This is what's wrong with our world"

Steve Alessi: 14:57

Our bedroom.

Chris Alessi: 14:58

Your bedroom, forgive me.... drop a bomb, and then want to go, now that I've vented want to go my separate ways. And so we had to learn to put boundaries around that. If dad wanted to talk about work stuff at home, he had every right to do that, because you know what? He's paying for both the work stuff and the home stuff. But as one of the subordinates of the home, I had to learn, I couldn't do that. And it's prepared us now that I'm married, I know how to do it. Yeah, has taught us that's what the drive home is.

Steve Alessi: 15:24

Yeah. And it's okay that we talk our business, family business at home, we can't separate, we can never separate who we are from what we do in our line of work. If you got to be at first before you do it, then you got to realize ministry starts at home first, and ministry, the work of the ministry is hammered out. So even right now, Chris, sometimes our best planning sessions happen at home, not in the office, sitting on the patio, looking out, getting creative, talking about how we're going to handle something coming up. And it frees us up from some of the chatter that we get when we come to the office. So the home is not a bad place. What happens is when we go through a service, and Gaby you with young, young kids today, it's very easy to have a service, have somebody share something with you, that they're going through, and then you get in the car. And you can bring some of that stuff home with you, some of the problems that are going to burden you as an... as a leader. And sometimes you you've got to figure out between the time you leave church, by the time you get home, to be able to kind of say, All right, I'm not the Savior here. And I can't do anything about it right now. But when I get back in the office tomorrow, I can engage and that going home period, is... can be a challenge sometimes.

Gabrielle Alessi: 16:49

It's very challenging. And I tried to tell... like, because I did, thankfully I learned a lot from him, really going through that. And he had a lot of trials and errors. And I got to kind of pick from "Okay, I saw"... I mean Lauren and I were in the car with him and Steph. And they would go at it. And we would, I would see how just, he was just emotionally drained. I mean, he spoke for 30 minutes. And he was young, 45 minutes, 45 minutes. I tried not to , but you did it. But he would speak. And we both know how draining that is physically, but emotionally. And after you speak especially when you speak to young people, you don't get a response when you speak to older people, you don't have people coming up saying, "Wow, that just so blessed me," you're speaking to youth. And now you have to believe that this is blessing them. And you have to be confident yourself. But it's hard when you're young. So he would do that and get in the car, and it would be tough for him. So I saw how he would handle it. And I had to kind of make some ground rules for myself and even the team that I work with. And we've all made an agreement, if there's issues, if there's a mistake that was made with whether it was set up or tear down or worship, whatever, I asked all of them, "hey, write it down in your notes and send it to me in the morning." And it was funny because I'm... I'm somebody that if I'm... I can't really do things, two things at once. Chris is great at it. I can't like multitask like him. And they would come to me with a problem after service. And I'd be talking to a young person. And I'd be like, I can't handle it. So I've we've created a culture of write it down, send it to me, and then I'll get in the car. And I just have to really fight because he had all of us girls in the car with him on Friday, when he would leave the youth. I don't have anybody driving home with me.

Chris Alessi: 18:26

You're alone.

Gabrielle Alessi: 18:27

I'm alone. And I have to... when I get in the car, my... my schedule, I could say when I get in the car is okay, I put on worship music. And I process the service with the Lord. And I talk it all out. And I'll say, I didn't like that this happened. And there's a "but look at this kid, he came up and she came up." And I'll have that moment really with the Lord. And I'll just or sometimes I'll just sit in my car and just stay quiet. And no music will play because I don't want to stimulate myself anymore. And I'll just let myself come totally down and then I'll get home and you guys will ask me how it went, and since I learned from the bomb, I was like don't do that. So I'll just speak to you guys. And then I'll pick it up the next morning. And I also try not to minor or major over the minors, especially because you're working with young people. And we're all, I'm learning. So I really do have to let go and constant let go of the stress and just take that moment. I'll say every time I get in the car on Wednesday nights when I'm by myself, I have to force myself to thank God for the position I'm in. Because no young 21 year old girl is in the position I'm in and is getting to operate in this.

Steve Alessi: 19:35

Not too many of them, Gaby, not too many of them. Well, that's good you say that because that's just you at your levels. ...Mom and I, Mary and I had to learn this early on with just us and our marriage. Because we could go to church on Sunday and we'd have great services and here's where it gets challenging... when the husband's the pastor and the wife is the worship leader, because we would flow together, we could have a phenomenal service, and then get in the car and want to talk about things that didn't go right. The one or two things and the one or two people where things didn't go the way we wanted them to would get most of the attention in the car on the way home.

Gabrielle Alessi: 20:23

Yeah

Steve Alessi: 20:24

... instead of us giving, you know, praise and complimenting each other and really working and saying, hey, let's be intentional about the things we talked about that are uplifting and positive, we would leave the service and after a great service go home. And man, by the time we get home, ...the service was just terrible. And the people were terrible. And then sometimes we'd turn it on each other. Because you'd feel bad, I would feel bad. I feel like "Wow, I didn't get that message delivered right? I didn't get the response I wanted," or she was like, "Wow, I didn't get the cooperation from the team and the crowd wasn't with me". And then we'd get in the car. And we couldn't help but take it out on each other. And we had to finally say, enough of the negative. Even to this day, it's not just something that naturally happens. We have to intentionalize, okay, when we get in the car, hey, let me compliment her first. Because I know mom, if I'm preaching, she's gonna say something very complimentary to me now. And I want to make sure before we get going too far, I'm going to say something about either, what she's sang, how her team sang, what words she spoke, I want to know from her first. So even when we're both speaking at different times, I'm going to get off, "Babe...." She goes say, Hey, man, how did it go with the other campus? Oh, no. Let me ask you first, how did it go with you? I want to make sure she's able to tell me the good and I want to be able to celebrate that with her. And then I'm gonna bring up, hopefully the good. Now, that doesn't always happen. But what we do is even when it's not, when we're not doing it the right way we realize, okay, now, this is just part of the process. It's just the ride home. It's just some of the things we saw that weren't right. It's not gonna ruin the integrity of what we're doing in that... that ministry, it's not the ministry. It's not the church's fault. It's not the service's fault. It's not the ministry's fault, our business that things happen this way.

Gabrielle Alessi: 22:26

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 22:26

they just happen. Yeah. And you get good days, you get bad days. And one of the greatest lessons I learned over the years was alright, let's just get on base every Sunday. We were raised thinking, Man, we got to blow it up. We got to get a home run every service,

Chris Alessi: 22:44

Revival every Sunday.

Steve Alessi: 22:45

Every Sunday. So we would sing and sing and sing, and then we would preach and preach, and shout and scream, and spit, and snort, and spin ,thinking, wow, I really touched God. And then on Monday, you could hardly talk because you lost your voice. That... that may have worked for a season.

Gabrielle Alessi: 23:04

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 23:05

But what happens when we don't hit a homerun? Then how do we feel? What happens if the deal didn't go through the way we really wanted it to or we didn't have such a great week successfully, financially? Well, that's when we got to look at things and say, Okay, look, I got 52 Sundays to get it right. I don't have to do it every week. But as long as I get on base, and I don't strike out, I'm going to be fine. At least we're in the inning. We're still in the game. We're playing hard. Where we blow it though is when we take it out on each other.

Gabrielle Alessi: 23:39

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 23:40

Because I didn't get on base.

Gabrielle Alessi: 23:43

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 23:44

And somehow, like you said, it's easy to blame others for it.

Chris Alessi: 23:46

It becomes personal. But you know, what you're describing right now, is you're just you as our dad defined the wins for us. And it was funny how we all came into it with our own subconscious wins. This is what I thought would make me a winner. But dad helped speak to us, "These are the wins." And you've just described a bunch of wins. But the underlying win for the Alessi family is that in 10 years, we're still doing this together. And that's probably the defined number one win. You've told us that all our lives, that's the win. So when you start sitting back and you're thinking, Okay, that didn't go right, that didn't go right. That didn't go right. But are we doing it together? We won. And it is crazy how when you redefine your wins, it's not just about the assembly line of product after product. We've made product, we've sold it, we've made it, we've sold it. When you make it about part of the win of all this is that, you know, we keep doing it together.

Gabrielle Alessi: 24:42

Yeah.

Chris Alessi: 24:42

Then it puts all of those little losses into perspective. And so believe it or not the culture of Metro, we have it all over the place. We're intentional about the wins. And part of that win is relationship and just doing it together.

Gabrielle Alessi: 24:55

And I think that is what... I think this is what happens with us and when you're In the work of it, you get stuck in the work. But when you have even a Sunday, like... if we ever get a Sunday randomly where we don't have to sing, or we have, just get to sit, it hits you and you look around and you're... you really think, Wow, we get to do this together. Like, number one, we get to do this period. This is such a blessing. But I get to do this with my family. I love it when I'm on on Wednesday night, last week, Steph and Lauren came. And I remember being so nervous, because I was like, Oh my god, they're going to see the ministry, They're going to be... And I remember sitting back and being so proud and embracing the mistakes. Because I mean, it's a bunch of young people leading this ministry, and we're embracing it. And I'm laughing and I'm telling Steph, wasn't that hilarious how we messed up? But I'm sitting there thinking, I get to do this with my sister, my sister gets to see it. Sundays, I get to lead worship next to Lauren. And dad comes up for the prayer. And then mom comes in. And then I know while we're singing at dadeland, Steph and Chris are holding down Doral while you guys are traveling. And it's just such a blessing because there are not many families that are together like this. We've met a lot of people that work together and they can't get the relationship right, or they look like their relationship's great on stage. But then they get off and they don't go to lunch together after church. They don't want to be around each other. They don't do good. They have to work in separate offices. I mean, I share an office with Steph, and I love it. And we argue, but it's just such a privilege and a blessing that we all get to do it together every single week.

Chris Alessi: 26:31

You guys live together. And the couple of times where you get out of the house to come into my house and we're hanging out together.

Gabrielle Alessi: 26:38

Or we're going to church, more than that we're going to church, working next to each other.

Steve Alessi: 26:42

And guys, every bit of that is intentional.

Gabrielle Alessi: 26:44

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 26:45

we really strive for that. When we do go to lunch after church on Sunday? Not all the time. But when we do go to church on Sunday, or go to lunch after church on Sunday, as a family, it's really our way, Mom and I, our way of saying hey, great job, everybody. Yeah. Because we are functioning at two different campuses, there'll be some campuses where or some Sundays where I'll be at one campus, and you all will be at another campus and I don't get to see you do ministry, or you don't get to see me or hear me do ministry. And because of that, it's always nice, then we can... when we can come together and talk about at lunch, "Hey, what happened? Who did you talk to? What pictures did you get from this one, who came over and talked to you? Who did this that or the other?" And we share the good because we protect that ride home. What we're saying is everything after the service, everything after the job we... though it may be negative... we don't...major on those negatives. We... we know it's there. But let's just intentionalize the good.

Gabrielle Alessi: 28:00

Yes.

Steve Alessi: 28:01

The good people. Yeah, the good service.

Chris Alessi: 28:03

The people that did show up.

Steve Alessi: 28:04

The people that did show up, Chris. The... the offering that did come in.

Gabrielle Alessi: 28:09

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 28:09

The wonderful new visitors. You know, there's something you fill out every week. It's an AAR. And that after action report says okay, only one that really placed at the bottom. Is there any room for any negative, but of the five or six that you're filling out?

Chris Alessi: 28:25

It's all positive.

Steve Alessi: 28:25

It's really asking you, tell me the positive. Tell me the highlight. Tell me the person you met today for the first time. I mean, we're really a relational church. We should be meeting new people every Sunday. You fill out that relational report that says yeah, I met so and so when I met this one, I met that one. What you're really doing is you're highlighting all the good.

Chris Alessi: 28:45

Yep.

Steve Alessi: 28:45

And then it says at the bottom what needs to be discussed. That's where we put 'this is an issue.' I know this week, I need to deal with that issue, whether it was a sound issue, whether it was an AC issue, whatever, I get to deal with that issue when I get in the office, so I put it in writing. So I don't have to bring the negative up into the conversation on the way home. And it's a great way for us to protect the integrity of the workplace. And what I mean by that, is it's always a beautiful place.

Gabrielle Alessi: 29:20

Yes.

Steve Alessi: 29:21

And the issues that happen that causes problems, that maybe even want to cause us to fight? We're going to deal with those because that's just part of building. It's just part of developing, but we're going to focus on the good that we're able to accomplish. And even today, let me tell you some good things that just happened. I mean, we just had another podcast.

Gabrielle Alessi: 29:46

We did it together.

Steve Alessi: 29:47

We did it together. All right. Last thing I want to do before we leave. What's... what sibling do you fight with the most Chris?

Chris Alessi: 29:54

Stephanie.

Gabrielle Alessi: 29:54

Stephanie.

Steve Alessi: 29:56

Gaby?

Gabrielle Alessi: 29:57

I don't know who... I think...

Steve Alessi: 29:58

Wait a minute, you were answering for him.

Gabrielle Alessi: 30:00

I was answering for him. Not for me.

Chris Alessi: 30:01

Stephanie, 100%. Me and Stephanie, we've gotten so much better. I mean, there are times where I'm saying something these days, and I'm like, she's gonna get pissed. And I watch and her face does not change at all. And she's happy and she's sweet. And I'm like, Wow.

Gabrielle Alessi: 30:15

When y'all go at it, you go at it.

Chris Alessi: 30:18

Back in the day, We used to fight a lot. She just, you know, where I see black, she sees white. Where I see gray, she sees...

Gabrielle Alessi: 30:26

She sees black or white.

Steve Alessi: 30:27

She's me you know. She's me.

Chris Alessi: 30:30

Yeah. So obviously,

Steve Alessi: 30:31

She's not your dad.

Chris Alessi: 30:32

Yeah, no, I don't call that fighting when you and I do it. I didn't think I was allowed to call it fighting. No, I thought it was.... You're correcting me and I'm being disrespectful. That's what I thought it was.

Steve Alessi: 30:41

Okay. Who do you, Gaby, fight with the most?

Gabrielle Alessi: 30:44

I think, you know, after this week? Lauren. Are you serious? Well, I don't we don't fight a lot. Like, I think we've all gotten over it. And it's having the separation. We all have our own, like kind of our own lives now. But really, I think it's.. it jumps. But I think Lauren and I do go at it the most.

Chris Alessi: 31:03

Has it ever been me?

Gabrielle Alessi: 31:05

No, because we're so like, no, we're eight years apart. So it's different. But like, it's funny how you said earlier how you and I, I'm a sponge with you? I'm not a sponge with him. And that's where it differs. That's where it differs!

Steve Alessi: 31:19

I think that's very normal when it comes to siblings. Time will...

Gabrielle Alessi: 31:23

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 31:23

Because that's part of the whole leadership ladder that you climb, you don't start at the place of respect where they give you... you give him permission to be a leader. He earns that over time as we all do. It's really when you're.... when your family, it's positional.

Gabrielle Alessi: 31:41

Yeah.

Steve Alessi: 31:41

It starts at position that, hey, they...I got to submit to him because he's my older brothe. But with time - and the same goes when it's your little sister - But with time, you both work so well together, so gifted and we see the results of your labors that then you move in from "Well, it's not a position"

Chris Alessi: 32:01

...permission.

Steve Alessi: 32:02

I give him permission or I give her permission to lead. And that's a journey we're constantly on. Well, guys, thanks so much today. I hope you've enjoyed the family business podcast that we've been able to spend some time with Christopher, Gabrielle, and you heard about Mary, Lauren, and Stephanie and the three of them are not here to defend themselves so we hope we can get them back at another time to give you their side of the argument. God bless.